'Only up from here': Tempo's off-court success offers optimism after injury-ravaged inaugural campaign

It had been a long and trying season for the head coach of the Toronto Tempo and Sandy Brondello looked more exhausted than energized.

One of the WNBA’s premier tacticians with two championships and two additional Finals appearances on her resume, Brondello had never missed the WNBA playoffs as a head coach over 13 seasons prior to this year.

But the post-season had been gone for many months and here she was 10 minutes after a 14-point loss to the woeful Connecticut Sun acutely aware of the reality in front of her — an 11-33 season that included losing 22 of their last 24 games.

The last two months of the season for Toronto’s WNBA franchise was a gruelling, slow-motion march simply trying to navigate an injury-depleted roster.

How bad did it get for the Tempo? The team ranked first overall in the WNBA in games lost to in-season injuries (121 games). You want another telling statistic that encapsulated the year? The quartet of Brittany Sykes, Marina Mabrey, Nyara Sabally, and Kiki Rice — the team’s most talented players— played a total of just 78 minutes together this season. That’s 95 minutes less than the running time of the hit film, The Odyssey.

“I told them after the game about how special it is being the first team in Canada and how our fans still supported us, even though we weren't winning many games,” Brondello said on a folding chair, flanked by Rice and Isabelle Harrison.

“Losing didn't take us away from being the best team that we could be given what we were facing. I don't think any other team in the history of the league had had so many in-season injuries. … Character is shown in face of adversity and I think we handled it as well as we could. But now it's remembering — we don't want to go through this shit again.”

Expansion teams always struggle with depth, which made the injuries to the Tempo’s starters impossible to overcome. The team’s million-dollar backcourt of Sykes (23 games) and Mabrey (eight games) missed 31 games combined. Rice was sidelined for almost all of June and July. The Tempo faded in a ton of games in the final two quarters, as players were clearly gassed. 

The brutal truth is their play after the World Cup break was poor. Belgian point guard Julie Allemand said in her exit interview with the media that the team needed to be tougher and better focused on details even through the injuries. She was disappointed in the final four games, as was Brondello.

Memorable moments

Still, there were memorable on-court highlights including the first-ever win on May 13 in its second-ever game, a 7-5 start to the season, and Marina Mabrey’s 53-point outburst in a rout of the Los Angeles Sparks on June 25, tying the WNBA single-game scoring record.

Mabrey was selected to the WNBA All-Star Game the following month, a nice first for the franchise.

Rice, the team’s No. 1 pick, landed on the AP’s All-Rookie Team after averaging 13.4 points with a 47.2 field goal percentage over 28 games.

WATCH | Tempo's Mabrey ties single-game WNBA point record in win over Sparks:

Marina Mabrey ties WNBA record with 53 points, leads Tempo to dominating win over Sparks

June 25|

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“If you can't embrace hard, you probably shouldn't be in this league,” Brondello said.

“What we do every day, day in, day out, wins or losses, highs and lows, injuries, not injuries, is tough. There were only a few games where I was a little disappointed with our effort. Overall, I think their resiliency, their togetherness has been commendable. That's all you can ask for in a season with so much adversity. There's some things that we can be really excited about as we move forward into 2027.”

Where the franchise really soared was how the community received them. There was an expectation that this season would be a honeymoon for the team no matter the record given how long women’s basketball fans had waited for the WNBA to come to Canada. You saw that for the entire season.

The crowds at Coca-Cola Coliseum and Scotiabank Arena were voracious for the WNBA, including the visiting teams. Every game at Coca-Cola was a sellout and the Tempo set a WNBA regular-season attendance record of 20,996 fans for their first-ever game in Montreal at the Bell Centre on July 10.

Commercial, brand goals achieved

One of the things Tempo management prioritized in 2026 was brand awareness across Canada and the markers indicate big success. According to the team, the Tempo generated 98,000 media stories during the season which they estimated the reach at 346 billion earned media impressions.

Between May 8 and the final game on Sept. 24, they gained nearly 94,000 social media followers across multiple platforms and should soon hit 400,000 social media followers across multiple platforms. ESPN produced a documentary (“Setting The Tempo”) on the making of the team, which was a nice bit of brand exposure in the United States. The media deal with TSN produced games being shown across Canada and the network invested in on-air talent and shoulder programming.

The franchise adeptly navigated the one crisis PR moment of the year when Brondello was suspended for one game by the WNBA for an inappropriate comment she said about Angel Reese during a game against the Atlanta Dream.

“We have done very well at reaching franchise commercial and brand metrics that we had set out to reach,” Tempo president Teresa Resch said. “We set an all-time record of attendance at Montreal and we sold out every single game at Coca-Cola Coliseum. We know that through our brand awareness studies that our brand awareness grew like 75 per cent over the season, which is incredible. ... I would say based on business metrics, our inaugural season was a glowing success.

“But look, anecdotally, the more a team wins the more everything else falls in place."

• A'ja Wilson wins AP WNBA Player of the Year for 3rd straight year; Angel Reese top defensive player

Resch said the business operations will do a deep-dive on all facets of the business after the season. The basketball department will do the same.  

“This is the first of many seasons and we're not going to solve everything in Season 2. It’s about having an understanding about what we need to make a priority and I think that will come with a lot of reflection and be evident quickly," Resch said.

The Tempo ranked last in the WNBA in defensive efficiency — opponents shot a league-best 51.9 per cent against them. That’s not sustainable for success. Some of the defensive issues were injury related but the Tempo desperately need a rim protector and that should be priority No. 1 in free agency over the next two years.

“Not a secret that we need to improve in that area,” general manager Monica Wright Rogers said.

“We were able to chip away at post depth by adding Aneesah [Morrow] before the trade deadline. Adding more opportunities for a post player that can dynamically protect our rim and play the kind of defence that the coaches want to play is the goal.”

The coaching staff and management have consistently stated that they believe Rice will be a standout player in the league. (Full transparency: As an Associated Press WNBA voter, I voted for her on my All-Rookie Team.) Rice’s floor looks to be a quality WNBA starter. What we don’t know yet is whether her ceiling is a WNBA All-Star.

Eye on the WNBA Draft

As important a selection as Rice was, the future of the franchise will be significantly more impacted by this year’s yet-to-be scheduled WNBA Draft. The loss to Connecticut produced a net positive — the Tempo tied for the best lottery odds for the top pick in the Draft.

The jewel prospect is JuJu Watkins, a six-foot-two junior guard for USC who last played 18 months ago after suffering a torn ACL at the end of her sophomore season.

Watkins is considered a franchise-altering generational prospect on the level of Paige Bueckers or Caitlin Clark. But there is a caveat: She has another year of college eligibility if she so chooses.

Give me one good reason Juju Watkins can’t compete in the NBA <a href="https://t.co/5SQLolHM3q">pic.twitter.com/5SQLolHM3q</a>

&mdash;Hoopss

The next best prospect is Madison Booker of Texas, a six-foot-one guard/forward who looks to have All-WNBA potential. Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, a dynamic five-foot-six point guard and Mikaylah Williams, a six-foot guard/forward from LSU are prospects that would be worthy No. 1 selections in other years.

If the Tempo procured Watkins, they would likely be a playoff team next season (injuries permitting). That’s how good her talent is.

The country’s most famous women’s basketball player sees a bright future. Kia Nurse’s on-court future is unclear — she’ll be 31 next year and has broadcasting opportunities ahead of her — but she believes the infrastructure is set up for long-term success.

“We fell short of a couple of our goals here this year – we wanted to be a playoff team,” Nurse said.

“But we put ourselves in a really great place foundationally to build on what we have. Next year everything will not be brand new. ... I think the sky’s the limit, and it’s only up from here.”